Beat That Kid in Chess (Paperback) | Released: 02 Sep 2015

Reading level for the text: teenagers and adults (Assumes the reader already knows the rules) This book has been carefully crafted for the raw beginner who wants to win a chess game as soon as possible. It's for the beginner who knows the rules but not much else. Children, teenagers, and adults can benefit from these lessons and the two chapters of exercises: simple and advanced exercises at the end of the book. This chess book is balanced in depth and breadth, with lessons on how to checkmate your opponent, gain a material advantage over another beginner, promote a pawn to a queen, pin one of your opponent's pieces, make a knight fork, avoid becoming checkmated, and much more. It emphasizes what a beginner most needs to know and understand, as soon as possible. The approach was organized by a professional nonfiction writer who began teaching chess beginners in the 1960's. He knows what the raw beginner most needs to learn. Of the countless chess books which have been published, very few appear to be carefully written for beginners, perhaps less than 10%. Of those that seem to be for beginners, most are too confusing and more appropriate for lower-ranked tournament competitors. "Beat That Kid in Chess," however, is especially for early beginners. Consider the advantages in this book: 1) Simple - It really is for the early beginner 2) Concise - no chess history or reciting the rules 3) Huge Diagrams - no magnifying glass needed 4) Win-focused - quickly learn to win a game 5) Two levels of exercises - learn at your pace 6) Reviews - appropriate repetition, as needed 7) Internal references - find things quickly 8) Two indexes - general and exercises 9) All three phases - opening, middle, end game 10) Critical tactics - pin, knight fork, etc 11) Checkmates explained - attack and defense 12) Common pitfalls explained - avoid errors "Beat That Kid in Chess" has another benefit over other chess books for beginners. Being written by a professional nonfiction writer gives advantages, including this: Similar chess positions are shown, with slight changes that make all the difference. This helps the beginner avoid accidentally memorizing positions and remembering particular tactics by general appearances. This requires an explanation: Tactics rule in chess, more than 90% of the time, with some estimates being around 98% to 99%. General principles, proclaimed in proper English, have limited benefit to the raw beginner, who needs to see examples that illustrate the pin and the knight fork, etc. But greatly-different positions, commonly shown in almost all chess books, can allow a reader to accidentally memorize general patterns that are not relevant to those tactics. "Beat That Kid in Chess" solves this problem, perhaps the only chess book ever written that solves it. For example, Diagram-17 and Diagram-18 are almost the same (pages 27 & 28), but the pawns on the left are different. A white bishop can capture a black knight, identical possibilities in both positions, for those two pieces are on the same squares. But in one position that capture would be a great move and in the other it would be a terrible blunder. This helps the reader to learn to see the important details in each position.